Review of The 1964 World's Fair (1996) by Tonypolito — 04 Sep 2010

Disappointing hack job.

Not much 'seeing' and 'reliving' The Fair in this imagery. Apparently zero funding toward royalties of copyrighted content. So the viewer is sold a hodge-podge of barely relevant and/or barely interesting visuals.

Trouble starts early-on, after two full minutes of authentic 1960s Super8 home-brew movies - riding the schoolbus, Sunday-spinning the family station wagon, backyard pool-splashing, even junior-high baton-twirling practice. Hey, are we going to the World's Fair, or what?

There's surely tons of decent quality video available from local TV networks, corporations that sponsored the Pavilions, promotional imagery from the Fair's organizers. But there's little of that here. Instead there's lotsa Super8 Fair-goer celluloid, poorly composed/shot and unrestored.

Then loads of plain ol' desperate-director filler: The Pieta exhibit = shots of the Vatican; Federal Pavilion = JFK breaking ground somewhere; the coincident but unrelated 1964 Civil Rights Act = stock footage of picketing - somewhere. Far more footage of site construction progress then The Fair itself, likely construction company documentation snagged at no cost.

Not enough footage of The Fair's amazing architecture. Barely any Pavilion interiors. The Pepsi Pavilion with the (then cutting edge) Disney audio animatronics, all the little dolls singing? Five seconds of garbled Super8. The animated Lincoln at the Illinois Pavilion? Absent. Even though the director could have actually filmed these attractions today, since they're now/still housed on Disney property.

But, hey, you DO get to see people eating Belgian Waffles.

Also doesn't bother visiting today's Flushing Meadows, to gander the few still-intact structures/exhibits.

The viewer's repeatedly force-fed six talking heads waxing nostalgic their childhoods at The Fair. Warm and fuzzy for them, perhaps, but viewer-snoozer.

Connecticut Public TV, 1996; Judd Hirsch narrates cheese.

RECOMMENDATION: Spend your hour looking at the pictures & information at NYWF64.Com instead.